World Cup 2010: even in Italy Fabio Capello is not quite that fab anymore

On the Sardinian beach from where I have been monitoring the World Cup over the past week, the temperature has been rising. So much so that by midday it has been painful to make one's way across the sand from the beach towel to the cooling sea. You know how it is …

On the way down: Fabio Capello despairs as England ship another goalPhoto: ACTION IMAGES

By Mick Brown

8:00AM BST 29 Jun 2010

Enthusiasm for the football, on the other hand, has been distinctly lukewarm. The water may be the blue of an Azzurri shirt – but there have been no Azzurri shirts to be seen, never mind England ones. The smiling African salesmen making their processional way back and forth along the beach with their trinkets and fake Louis Vuitton bags couldn't care less. All are from Senegal, despatched in the qualifying rounds. I seem to be the only person reading the official Fifa World Cup Guide.

The village lacks even the basic amenity of a bar with a television set. I had to drive two miles to the nearest resort hotel to watch England play Slovenia.

A dozen or so men huddled furtively around the TV screen in a gloomy lounge, while outside in the sunshine happy children were being chivvied along singing Disney songs – Zip A Dee Doo Dah – by red-shirted team leaders. To be hidden away in the half-darkness seemed almost … perverse. At one point one of the team leaders led a crocodile of children through the room – part of some game, or perhaps a caution. Whatever you do, kids, don't grow up like these saddos.

I was the only Englishman in the room, but it was clear the locals were rooting for England, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom.

And then the penny dropped - the murmurs of recognition and approval, and the chuckles of amused sympathy each time the television cameras sought out the splenetically agitated figure on the touchline, gesticulating wildly for his players to 'get back'.

However fluctuating his status in England, Fabio Capello is still very much a hero at home.

Being an honorary Slovakian by dint of a random sweepstake ticket has proved more rewarding than I could ever have imagined.

I would like to claim that I had planned to be in Italy in the week that my adopted nation took on the world champions. But it was actually my wife who planned it – some months ago, and in blissful ignorance of the World Cup, or even that Slovakia had a football team.

Kismet!

Last week started badly. Following criticism of the team back in Slovakia, manager Vladimir Weiss stormed out of a press conference after just 40 seconds, blaming that familiar fall-guy – the media. And that was before the team's 2-0 defeat by Paraguay.

Bottom of Group F. What hope against the world champions? It was back to the hotel lounge.

The furtive dozen had now swollen to around 250 Italians – seething with anticipation. The Disney songs and games had been cancelled, the children left to fend for themselves. This was serious.

When Slovakia took the lead, a terrible groan filled the room. You thought England fans could be impatient and short-tempered?

Every mis-hit Italian pass, each fluffed opportunity, was greeted with shouts of fury, curses and muttered oaths about the terrible vengeance that would be wreaked on the players and their mothers.

At 2-0 a riot seemed inevitable. Then the false dawn of an Italian comeback, the soft goal from a throw-in. To the outsider this was shaping up as one of the most thrilling 45 minutes in the tournament. But there were no outsiders here.

The Italians are a warm, generous and hospitable people, and it is a terrible thing to see grown men cry. It would have been churlish in the extreme to celebrate a historic Slovakian victory with, say, a verse or two of Zip A Dee Doo Dah – and it never pays to be smug. On Sunday afternoon I was back in the hotel lounge again, this time the only Englishman in a room that seemed to have mysteriously filled with Germans.